Wednesday, 11 January 2012

Flitting to and from the ancient market town of Kingston
upon Thames every fortnight, the Brimstone Butterfly
will often alight upon the venerable 1650s wooden staircase, which once adorned
the Crown Inn. It lacks the stately splendour of the King’s Staircase at Hampton
Court, made for King William III four decades
later, but it possesses a singular rustic charm. I believe it has yielded up
most of its secrets to me, the latest being the initials FoD, which had been
carved into one of the handrails. They look to have been done at a much later
date than the others though and somewhat furtively to boot.

On my last visit to Kingston
I also had a chance to go into the upper council chamber inside the 19th
century Guildhall. A guildhall has stood on this site since the reign of
Elizabeth I and its size and shape follows a pattern which can be found up and
down England.
The panelled wooden doors are rather impressive and the cornicing an elegant
touch. I was disappointed not to find an
imposing fireplace set within the council chamber. The chimney piece is still
there so it would have been graced with an open fireplace at one stage. All I found was a workman eating his
sandwiches on a small set of stairs. He kindly allowed me to take pictures of
the room whilst he munched away.

Kingston once
had a myriad of public houses and it struck me that other facades with carved
wooden bunches of grapes might well have served as inns in previous centuries.
It is very difficult for the uninitiated such as me to always work out which facades
are authentic and which have been remodelled in the 20th century. So
I will simply reproduce some of the more striking facades which took my fancy.

Kingston dates
back to Anglo Saxon era. Indeed, it was once so central to Anglo Saxon life
that seven kings held their coronations in what is now the modern market place,
before being carried into the nearby All Saints church to be anointed with holy
oil and crowned king. Edward the Elder was the first Anglo Saxon king to be
crowned here in 902. He was the grandson of the legendary King Alfred the
Great, who was not so great when it came to baking cakes. According to
tradition, Alfred managed to burn some cakes a woman has asked him to watch
over whist she busied herself elsewhere. I managed to decapitate and burn
several gingerbread men and women I made over the weekend using a 19th century
Flemish mould of musicians and a Delia Smith recipe, so I shall forbear
criticising my regal counterpart.

When the Normans
invaded England
in 1066 they preferred to choose London
as their capital leaving the Anglo Saxon church in Kingston
to fall into a steady decline. It was to be another 50 years or so before the Anglo
Saxon church was finally replaced with a much larger one by Gilbert the Norman,
Sheriff of Surrey, in 1120. Gilbert also established the priory at Merton,
which was later to become one of the greatest ecclesiastical buildings in
medieval England.
One of its most famous former students was Thomas a Beckett, who later became
Archbishop of Canterbury. Thanks to Henry VIII I can no longer boast of having such a magnificent ecclesiastical building in my neighbourhood as he had had Merton Priory pulled down in the 1538
and carted off the masonry to help build his new palace
of Nonesuch, which was itself later
demolished in the late 17th century by the avaricious Barbara Palmer.
The latter was one of King Charles II’s mistresses and persuaded her royal
lover to hand the palace over to her so she could pull it down and sell off the
demolition material as part of her wages of sin. Poor Gilbert the Norman did not have much
success with his churches and little can be seen of his original church at
Kingston as major changes were again made to the structure in the 15th
and 16th centuries.

Inside the church I came across a number of intriguing
memorials and monuments.A granite slab denoted the grave of William Cleave, the
Alderman who died in 1667 and left money for an almshouse and land to
maintain 12 poor people of the parish “for ever.” The almshouses survive on
into the 21st century and very charming they are too.

In August last year I had come across some later almshouse
bequeathed by Henry Bridges in 1720 in
nearby Thames Ditton. I had had to change trains and platforms at the railway
station and seen the almshouses from afar and decided to investigate
further. As at William Cleave’s almshouses
the fortunate occupants were given their own front door. The same was not true
for the denizens of Sir Robert Geffrye’s almshouses at Shoreditch, now better known as the Geffrye Museum.

Despite being grander in scale than William Cleave’s
almshouses at Kingston, Sir Robert
Geoffrye’s house offered the occupants only their own room, albeit large, as
opposed to a small terraced house.

Sir Robert and William also have another
connection beyond almshouses which I chanced upon on a recent visit. A monument
on the wall revealed that Sir Robert’s daughter Sarah, by his wife Temperance,
was buried near William Cleave.

There are several medieval monuments which have survived he
centuries including the brass effigies of Robert Skerne and his wife Joanna, who both look like a more upmarket version of my unbaked gingerbread men and women..
Joanna looks rather fetching in her long draped gown, cloak and elaborate headdress. Her claim to fame was that she was the daughter of Edward III through his
mistress Alice Ferrers. Like Barbara Palmer in the 17th century, Alice
was determined to make the most of being the king’s mistress and milk him for
all she could, not that she had to try too hard. Edward III was exceedingly
generous to Alice who became his mistress at the age of 15 in 1363, whilst still serving as a
lady in waiting to his queen, Phillippa. On the latter’s death, Edward became
even more prodigious in his generosity, endowing Alice with yet more land as
well as his late wife’s jewels. Now that he was a widower Edward openly
acknowledged Alice as his mistress
and had her dress in cloth of gold so she could be presented to the Court in
the guise of The Lady of the Sun. Edward’s behaviour made Alice
many enemies at court. They seized their chance on the king’s death to have her
put on trial for corruption and subsequently banished from England.
She forfeited her land in the process. In time the resilient Alice
returned to her native country and endeavoured to get back her
property. She died at 53 making her the same age at the Brimstone Butterfly,
although the latter has never knowingly had an affair with a king nor worn
cloth of gold, although her 19th century wedding kimono, the
highlight of her tour of her bedchamber, does have gold thread woven through
it.

Another brass memorial has fared less well. In the 20th century some shameless thief stole the figure of the kneeling lady's husband as well as the family coat of arms.

I felt a tad sorry for Sir Anthony Benn who died in 1618.
You go to all that trouble of having a splendid tomb with a terracotta life size
and life like effigy placed on top of it, then someone in the 21st century
ruins the entire effect by placing a red plastic swing bin next to it. I could
find out very little about Sir Anthony other than he had been a Recorder of
Kingston and London and that he
wrote a manuscript called “Advice to Amabella” his daughter in 1615. The
manuscript now resides in the State Library of Victoria and I would dearly love to
know what he counseled. Perhaps it contains the 17th century version of
the Vulcan salute: Live long and Prosper. Dying in her nineties after having married
two Earls in succession, Amabella certainly lived up to the Vulcan saying.

In his third edition of his work “Survey of London”
published in 1618 John Stowe dedicates his book to Sir Anthony Benn amongst
others. A century later in 1720 John
Strype used John Stowe’s book as the starting point for his own great work on
London :A survey of the Cities of London and Westminster In the latter Sir
Robert Geffrye’s almshouses are referred to thus:

“large Extent and Capacity, and well endowed: A great Sum of
Money being left for that Purpose to the Company of Ironmongers of London, by
Sir Robert Jefferies, Kt. and Alderman. It hath two Wings, and Rooms below and
above, very fair and beautifully built. It may contain between forty and fifty
Inhabitants, who may be either Men or Women: And have each six Pound per Ann.
allowed them; and Gowns every two Years. There is a Chapel in the middle of the
Building, fronting the Highway; and a Chaplain, who hath a Salary and Chamber
allotted him: He is to read Prayers twice a Day, and to preach a Sermon every
Sunday. The Building is not yet quite finished; nor the Court Yard levelled”.

I was rather put off the memorial to Henry Davidson when I realised he had made his money from sugar and slaves, even if he did
leave a widow called Elizabeth Caroline, whose death is recorded on the bas relief Grecian urn..

I was charmed by
the statue of Theodosia Louisa,
Countess of Liverpool, reclining in her chair and in deep though, her dainty
foot peeking out from beneath her long skirts. Louisa had been the wife of the British
Prime Minister and according to the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1829 she had been
interred at Hawksebury in 1821 following her death at the age of 54 ( only one
year older than Alice Ferrers) so why
her monument ended up at Kingston I do not know. However, I did admire the
inscription that proclaimed she had “kept herself unspotted from the world” as
indeed has the Brimstone Butterfly.

As well as the stone
countess the church boasts fragments of a Saxon stone cross from the original
10th century church. Outside can be seen a reinstated fragment of the original Saxon wall.

Thus ends the
Brimstone Butterfly’s perambulation around Kingston’s All Saints Church in the year of our Lord
2012.

Post Script

On the subject of
churches, for the past couple of Christmases the Brimstone Butterfly has spent
part of Christmas Day in the company of the celebrated Romantic poet, Samuel
Taylor Coleridge and his family. Or rather, she has sat in a pew by his
gravestone in the central aisle of St Michael’s Church, Highgate. The poet spent
his latter years as the house guest of his doctor who owned a fine residence
close by the church. In fact, the good doctor added a special wing for his
illustrious guest to live in. The 20th century playwright JB
Priestley also lived in the house. It is now lived in by a supermodel and given
the tendency of modern publishers to pay them huge sums to put pen to paper or at
least allow their name to appear above another’s actual scribbling, she will no
doubt add to the house’s great literary heritage in the fullness of time.

Kingston Revisited February 2012.

When I returned to All Saints Church on a
more recent occasion, graduates from the university of Kingston
were popping in to collect their mortar boards and gowns for the graduation
ceremony at the RoseTheatre. As their proud
friends and families took photographs of them, their presence gave a somewhat
festive air to the church and allowed me to take a closer inspection of the surroundings.
I immediately discovered that the stone slab top with its brass inlaid
memorials was all that survived of the medieval tomb of Robert Skerne and his
wife. Not having studied Latin I could not read the text in brass letters upon
the tomb. Fortunately a modern translation had been provided nearby. It read:

“He being valiant, faithful, courteous,
skilled-in-law,

Noble, ingenuous, did trickery abhor;

Constant in speech, in life, in feeling and
then in thought.

That justice freely and to all was due he
taught.

The honours of the royal law alone he
prized.

To cheat or be deceived he quite despised.”

Another wall plaque is dedicated to George
Bate, a principal physician of Charles II. George had served his father King Charles I
and then later Oliver Cromwell. At the Restoration George had his friends put
the word around that he has used his privileged position to connive at the
premature death of the Lord Protector of England. True or not, as a ploy it worked and George was allowed to enter the service of Cromwell’s bitterest enemy.

Edward Staunton had been a minister at All
Saints and later became president of Corpus Christi College, Oxford. In 1653 he
recorded on a wall monument that he and his wife Mary had buried 10 children in
the church. The deaths of the children were so numerous that the minister had
given many of them shared the same Christian name, perhaps hoping against hope
that at least one would survive to embody the other dead siblings: the monument
lists 3 Richards, 2 Edmunds, 2 Marys, a Sarah, Matthew and a Francis. As the
monument poignantly states to have so many children from the same family buried
together was “a dreadful sight.”

To cheer myself up I then proceeded to may
favourite 16th century staircase, where the mystery of the upper
panels was finally solved. On earlier visits I had failed to observe the small
notice at the bottom of the stairs which explained that in order to raise the staircase to the new height
required of its current location, extra panels had been commissioned by the
developers, St George, in the 1990s. Hence the motifs of the patron saint of England on
horseback and the dragon. I do not
believe the staircase has any more secrets to yield up now that I have examined
it with almost forensic rigour.

Saturday, 7 January 2012

Over the past couple of weeks the Brimstone Butterfly has flitted between three very different libraries.

Being in close proximity to my beloved Kenwood House I could not resist paying a visit to the 18th century mansion designed by Robert Adam and I am very glad that I did so too. Rather like me Kenwood House is beginning to fall apart at the edges. Unlike me, it is undergoing a comprehensive renovation to restore it to its former glory.

Work has started on the service block and only the Brewery House restaurant, the scene of my encounter with a former Spice Girl and erstwhile neighbour, was open, the rest of the block being shrouded in scaffolding. The photographs above were taken in 2010. I realised I had inadvertently taken a picture of a rotting pillar. It aptly demonstrates why Kenwood House was so in need of major restoration. Unfortunately the main house itself is scheduled to close for renovation in April 2012 and not reopen until September 2013, a veritable life time away for the bereft Brimstone Butterfly.

Other parts of the house are currently closed including the upper gallery containing both the intriguing Suffolk Collection of 17th century portraits and the rather temperamental resident ghost. But I was able to view the other paintings on display including works by Rembrandt and Vermeer and the rather touching double portrait of the 19th century dandy Beau Brummell as a small child with his brother. The portrait if the Beau is rather sad if one knows how his life ended: as a raving lunatic in a French asylum, the fastidious man of fashion reduced by the ravages of syphilis to a doubly incontinent shadow of his former self. One of the “new” books on display recently at my local library was Ian Kelly’s excellent biography of Beau Brummell, which I first mentioned on here in April 2010.

Last year, I visited Syon House which, like Kenwood House, had also been designed by Robert Adam. The elegant Dining Room at Syon is graced with a screen of Corinthian columns at either end, placed behind apsidal recesses. (The latter simply describes a semi-dome like effect). The Dining Room was finished in 1763. Robert Adam added similar Corinthian screens and apsidal recesses to the Earl of Mansfield’s Library at Kenwood a few years later. However, whereas the Dining Room at Syon has a gold and cream colour scheme, the Library at Kenwood used a much more colourful palette. In addition, it included wall paintings based on those found at Pompeii. By contrast the wall paintings of Ancient Rome at Syon are monochromatic.

To my great disappointment I could only step a few paces into the Earl’s library the rest of my way being roped off, whereas in the past I have been able to venture right inside. Consequently, I had to make to make do with taking a photograph of my reflection in one of the ornate gilt wall mirrors designed by Robert Adam, as I stood outside.

It was also from this terrace that the famous portrait of the enigmatic Dido Belle and her cousin, Elizabeth Murray was painted. In 2010 the weather was so bad at Christmas visitors were not allowed to step out onto the terrace. This year I was able to do so and took a photograph of the mock stone bridge, seen in the distance in the double portrait. The bridge is a mere facade and cannot be traversed. Before I left Kenwood House I made my way to my favourite room: the shop with its cream ceramic stove and elegant and cosy proportions. And thus I bid adieu to my beloved Kenwood House for what

will seem like forever.

.

It has been a while since I last made my way to the King’s Library within the British Museum. This originally formed the nucleus of the British Library and consisted of a large collection of books once owned by King George III. The Library played an even more important part in my personal history as it was the first place I worked at after graduating. I always found walking through the empty gallery first thing in the morning uplifting, the more so if it were sunny outside and light flooded through the windows of the elegant room built in 1827, with its graceful ornate plasterwork, granite columns and gilded balcony.

To get to my office, I had to unlock a concealed door in one of the bookcases. If I left the office in the afternoon before the public galleries had closed, I would wait until I could hear voices close by and then cause a minor stir by suddenly stepping out. The British Library has long since decamped to a purpose built building and to my mind rather ugly building by St Pancras station, the latter recently restored to its Victorian splendour. On a previous visit the King’s Library had been denuded of most of its books. Now it hosts a collection of exhibits from the British Museum. I had popped into the museum after an appointment elsewhere and so had little time to linger to establish the general theme before the building closed for the day. But I was determined to see if I could find the concealed door which had provided me with so much merriment all those years ago. It was still there. I refrained from ringing the bell to see if anyone answered as I wanted to visit the Reading Room.

Many a night was spent by me in the past doing overtime in the famous round Reading Room. The 1957 classic horror film, The Night of the Demon, filmed a key sequence here. Whenever I see this chilling depiction of devil worship, violent death and general mayhem on late night television it instantly brings back fond memories of my time in the British Library. Unfortunately I could not gain access to the Reading Room’s interior as it was hosting an exhibition. In my era, the exterior of the Reading Room could not be seen by the general public. Now the courtyard has been covered over with a glass roof and the refaced Reading Room exterior can be seen in all its magnificence.

The Pauper’s Library is of course my own local one at Wimbledon. In the IT room there is a series of naive paintings produced by students at the Wimbledon School of Art in the 1950s. They depict scenes of a bucolic and fanciful English country life but bear little resemblance to Wimbledon itself in the latter half of the 20th century. The paintings were meant for the children’s library but have remained behind as the children’s section has been moved elsewhere. Their loss is my gain. I rather think I would have been drummed out of the building if I had been seen taking a lot of pictures in the vicinity of small children. Luckily there were just adults huddled over their pcs. Even so, I had to be circumspect lest any complain that I was disturbing them or start to think I was trying to capture images of their computer screens.The paintings possess a singular charm and although might not be quite in keeping with the Georgian grandeur of Kenwood House or the King's Library in the British Museum, I am sure they have delighted many a little prince and princess over the years.